Midnight Lace is a 1960 American psychological thriller film directed by David Miller and starring Doris Day, Rex Harrison, John Gavin, Myrna Loy, and Roddy McDowall.
The screenplay by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts was based on the play Matilda Shouted Fire by Janet Green.
A television film remake of Midnight Lace, starring Mary Crosby and Gary Frank, premiered on NBC on February 9, 1981.
[3] American heiress Kit Preston and her British business owner husband Tony live in a wealthy neighborhood of London in a building undergoing major renovation.
Returning home in a dense fog through Grosvenor Square, Kit is startled by a disembodied male voice that threatens to kill her.
A shadowy man approaches the elevator and enters the car through its roof, terrifying Kit, before it is revealed to be Brian, attempting to rescue her.
Brian takes Kit to a local pub, where he recounts a near-death experience while he served in World War II.
During the ballet, Malcolm makes vague threats toward Kit, requesting additional money to help care for his mother.
In August 1958, it was touring the provinces in Britain but had not arrived in London when Universal announced they had acquired the screen rights as a vehicle for Doris Day.
[7] Day found the making of the film emotionally taxing, and on one occasion collapsed on the set, resulting in producer Hunter temporarily halting the production.
[8] The Time critic described the film: Another of those recurrent thrillers (Sorry, Wrong Number; Gaslight; The Two Mrs. Carrolls; Julie) in which a dear, sweet, innocent girl is pursued by a shadowy figure of evil who threatens her with all sorts of insidious molestation...Like its predecessors, Midnight Lace is not very interesting in itself, but it is uncomfortably fascinating when considered as one of the persistent fantasies of a monogamous society...False leads trail off in at least seven directions, but the climax of the film will come to most mystery buffs as no surprise...Doris Day wears a lot of expensive clothes, and in attempting to portray the all-American missus behaves like such a silly, spoiled, hysterical, middle-aged female that many customers may find themselves less in sympathy with her plight than with the villain's murderous intentions.
This is to be embellished by highly dramatic lighting effects and striking hues, principally in the warmer yellow-brown range of the spectrum.
The camera is to be maneuvered, whenever possible, into striking, unusual positions...The effervescent Day sets some sort of record here for frightened gasps.